Tremble (Denazen #3)(29)
He looked back to the phone in his hand. The picture of us on the screen was still open. Pocketing it, he said, “I need to find out what this is first. I need to be sure. Consider your sentence extended until I am.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
I could work with something.
11
“So, is this like a hijacking?” We had been driving for more than an hour now, and Kale still hadn’t told me exactly what we were doing—or where we were headed. The only thing he’d said was to pull out and take Interstate 90. This was exactly what I’d hoped for. The longer I kept him busy with me, the longer he’d be away from Denazen—and the brain-busting Six Aubrey mentioned. Hopefully time away would clear some of the cobwebs from his noggin. “Because if you’re holding me hostage, shouldn’t there be, I dunno, demands?”
He sighed, and from the corner of my eye, I saw him pinch the bridge of his nose just like Mom did when she was annoyed at me. “You talk a lot.”
“You like the sound of my voice. You told me so—on several occasions.”
He snorted. “Now I know you’re lying.”
I let several minutes pass before I prodded again. “So we’re going…where?”
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this. The truth.”
“And we’re going to find the truth by driving aimlessly? Because that’s a new kind of approach, and I’m not sure it’ll get us very far. Besides, the car’s almost out of gas and I’m starving.”
“Just drive. Get off at exit twelve.”
I followed his directions, and ten minutes later I pulled the car off the interstate by way of exit twelve. In his jacket pocket, my cell had gone off three separate times. If I didn’t get him to let me answer it soon, Mom might have a coronary.
Once we were off the highway, it was farmland as far as the eye could see, which reminded me of the cabin. Peaceful. None of the chaos and bright lights of the city. Until recently, I’d been a noise and chaos kind of girl. But after spending some time at the cabin, I was kind of growing to love the peace and quiet. “Okay. Now what?”
He scanned the area, and then pointed to the side of the road. There was a long white fence—and nothing else. “Pull over and get out.”
“The road to revelation is a picket fence? Who’da thunk it…” I opened the door and swung out a leg. A burst of icy air kicked in, sending tremors up and down my spine. “Where are we?”
I closed the door. It creaked in protest, and I was sure if I got in and out too many more times it would simply fall off. I leaned against the fence and peered out into the field. Six fat brown cows grazed in the distance. “Cow tipping doesn’t really seem like a productive use of our time right now.”
He turned to me, eyebrows high. “Cow tipping?”
“Really?” I tapped the side of my head, frowning. “You’d think if they were going to swirl things up in there, they would have added some reality along with the bullshit.”
Kale rolled his eyes and stepped to the fence. “More talking. Don’t you ever get tired?” Hefting himself up, he threw a leg over and propelled his body to the other side in true ninja fashion. At least that hadn’t changed. “Follow me.”
Although the barking-orders thing was getting old pretty damn fast.
We trekked through an open field—around the cows and without tipping any—until we came to the edge of a steep cliff. A narrow wooden bridge that hung over a raging river about twenty feet below connected our side to the other.
“This is it,” he said, sounding surprised. He spun slowly in a circle, taking in every inch of the area. “This is where it happened.”
A sign posted on a short wooden stake said, do not cross. Kale either hadn’t seen it or didn’t care, because he stomped out onto the middle of the bridge and leaned over the edge. I followed him, trying hard to ignore the not-so-subtle creaking the wood made with each step and the extra breeze as the planks swung from side to side. Stopping beside him, I watched tiny bits of pebble and dirt loosen, break away, and plunge into the water below. Wonderful. One wrong move and that would be us plunging to our deaths. “Where what happened?”
“This is where you pushed me over the edge.” He spoke the words, but they didn’t sound right. It was almost as if he were asking a question, not making a statement. At his sides, his fingers started to tap again. One. Two. Three. I’d noticed it at Ashley’s.
“I’ve never been here before. You have to believe me.” I backed away from the edge and the boards underfoot creaked loudly.
He whirled and pinned me with a look that, while deadly, was full of sadness. “Believe you? I don’t believe you. I don’t believe them. I don’t believe her.” He brought both hands up to tug at his roots, backing away from the edge. “I don’t believe me.”
This entire time, I’d kept going over how hard this was for me. How much I missed him. How much I wanted him back. Sure, I’d thought about the long-term impact this whole situation might have on him, but I’d never stopped to think what it might be like for him now—especially with me trying to shake things up. “We can figure this out, Kale. I promise.”
He froze, hands falling slack at his sides. A second later, he was on me. “You did this to me.”